Subject: BBS Memories
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:37:26 -0900
To: jason@textfiles.com
Sherman, set the wayback machine for 1986... Eagle River, Alaska.
Ah, the joys of of trying to BBS on an Apple II clone... a laser 128
EX with maxed out memory.
My modem was an Avatex 1200HC.
I got a BBS list from some friends at school, and I used some modem
software a buddy sneaker-netted over. I don't even remember what it
was, but it was shareware, and I never registered it.
My first BBS was The Haven... from Elmendorf AFB. (10 miles down the
road from home; Dad worked on Elmendorf.)
I do remember having to type the command
] PR#3
to invoke 80 column mode, then
] brun modem
Which got me to the modem...
then
+ atdt7530386
All of Alaska was (and as of this writing, still is) one area code: 907.
You had to know the switch prefixes. 753 was Elmendorf housing; 552
was Elmendorf work numbers. 428 was Fort Rich housing.
Prefixes I could use as local calls back then were 694, 688, 227,
248, 258, 271, 272, 274, 276 277, 278, 279, 333, 337, 338, 344, 345,
349, 522, 561, 562, 563, 742, 786, plus Elmendorf and Fort Rich's
numbers.
Most BBS's had pure text pre-login screens.
BBS's in Anchorage were varied in both target age. I was younger than
the haven targeted; the imagery shown was a female biker with a bone
in her hair.
Most BBS's were read-online. I used Fireweed Opus for email, NextGen
and Polish Castle for games, Assylum for WWIVnet, as well as a couple
other's.
The first couple years, that was about it. Being on an Apple, I
couldn't do ANSI graphics, and further, didn't get color, couldn't use
the .qwk packets. I got an actual Apple IIe for college in 1988. Same
modem.
I didn't do a lot of BBSing while in the dorms; I had to share the
phone.
In 1992, I had a roommate with a dos box... Techrat. (We still talk
once in a while, 2-3 times a year.) I got a taste of ANSI graphics.
In late 1992, I moved in with a different roommate. His handle was
Furvert, he was a die-hard wintel user, and he had two boxes running.
I got hooked on .qwk packets for reading offline.
In 1993, I got a Mac Color Classic. That machine served as my primary
box for 5 years. I had a terminal program for it, one that did VT100
with ANSI Graphics emulation. I also got a 14.4 hayes-compatible
modem; that modem is still in storage.
The most important aspects of the BBS experience:
1) The ANSI Graphics
2) Time Limits
3) The people
4) the files.
1) Every BBS in town migrated to ANSI graphics to some degree or
another. Some even tried really hard to use fancy ones. The typical
was using the dos upper 128 form-drawing characters. You had frames
around menus, and most menus had single character options. Most people
didn't change the options much; almost all did change the colors, the
ansi graphic work around the menus, and exactly which doors were
running.
Most local boards ran WWIVnet by 1992; a few ran Galacticom's multi-
line BBS. L&L and Roaring Lion were the best. Color ANSI supported,
and very pretty. L&L was hourly charges. If you had no credits, you
could still log in, but only for 30 minutes a day, and only the kid-
friendly area. You wanted adult chat, you paid your money. It wasn't
expensive; ISTR it was about 25 cents an hour.
2) Most boards of the day had time limits. Many were 30min a day.
Often, you'd have to wardial a popular BBS. User donations often paid
for multi-line boards; since a local only line was $15 or so a month
(now it's about $16...), and that was not cheap, plus you had to have
a computer buff enough to handle it.
Handling multi-line was not easy... you needed QEMM, BBS Software that
didn't hog files, and could run in multiple instances under QEMM, and
Expanded Memory in excess of a Megabyte.
Consider this: The big hurdle in BBS admin was getting the memory
boards up to high enough for more than 3 lines, but you also had to
handle IRQ issues, and with only 16 IRQs, and QEMM needing an IRQ per
line, and an IRQ was needed for each modem, and the system ate 5 or
so... few boards exceeded 4 lines.
Most boards allowed 30 to 60 minutes per day; a few were 90 minutes,
but were 2-line or 3-line.
One BBS ran 2 lines, one limited to 10 minutes and .qwk packet only,
the other, published number, was 30 minutes a day, play online.
Galacticom's BBS (and MajorBBS) handled multi-line with special shared
IRQ serial port boards; 1 IRQ for 4 modems; up to 4 boards could be
installed easily; a later model was 8 ports. The chat-board BBSs were
all pay-to-play in anchorage. It was very much like IMing is now,
except that (1) it was $0.25 an hour online, and (2) you had to dial
in to it. Several had actions built in, and those were only available
in the main (pay) chat; the unpaid chat was both nerfed heavily and
usually without actions.
Every networked board also had a down-time... when it would, itself,
dial it's uplink and exchange mail.
3) The BBS crowd was small, elite, and skill mattered far more than
age, beauty, or coolness. Some of my friends from online I've known
now half my life. Not close friends, but strong, lasting
friendships... Cliff, Fran, Brian, Sean, Steve, Monica...
And the handles... Horizon Red, Desperado, Lunatic, Madman, LyzrdLips,
Spitfire, Amazon, Moonshade, Dewshine, Buttercup, Whiplady, Frosty,
Fred, Furvert, Hawkey, Bilbo, Soxy, Syzygy, Medicine, Aeryn, Darkstar,
Mistreat, Techrat, Hilander, Darkness, JoeCool....
The people were decidedly odd. Generally bright, capable, and tech-
savvy. You had to be or know someone who was. The wildest were running
BBSs on systems so poor that it was amazing they got it to works.
Darkness running a BBS off a Commodore Vic20. Bilbo and his CP/M BBS.
The other thing was the sense of community; you chatted with these
people, but generally had no idea who they were. It made normal
people nervous. Everyone online came across as an extrovert... in some
cases, only online. And a sense of protectiveness. Once someone got
noted for being a dirty old man trying to seduce 14-16yo girls, sysops
would kick him.
What wasn't available, tho, was Caller ID... so you had only the
userID. The adult sites required you meet a sysop, with a copy of your
drivers license or state ID, and with the ID, and give your username
and password. And the smart ones made you sign the copy. They kept it
on file, to prove they had checked your ID, met you in person, and
that you claimed to be the person known online by your handle. it only
took a few lawsuits for sysops to get paranoid about adult access.
4) files
Lots of files. Shareware spread virally. Good programs got reuploaded
to many boards. Bad software didn't. Useful data got shared. Erroneous
data seldom did. Jokefiles made the rounds. Netbooks for RPG's were
born; many times someone would find two similar ones for the same
system, combine and reorganize them, and share them again in new mode,
and sweep outwards again.
The coolest was the .mod files... music files, some with samples,
others without... mods were awesome, spreading new types of techno; it
was awesome.
And of course, there was porn. Mostly scans of playboy or hustler.
Usually about 75 to 150 dpi. Usually stored as 8 bit .gif files. I
didn't D/L any myself... but my roommates did. It was SLOW, and we
felt the files were HUGE. Full centerfolds were rare... and often in
B&W. A 2 bit centerfold was 2 megs uncompressed, often 1 meg compressed.
Me, I grabbed a lot of SFB stuff. 72dpi, 1/2 meg uncompressed GIFs in
B&W... SFB SSD's. SFB, Star Fleet Battles, is a board game of starship
combat in a variant Star Trek Universe; the movies and later never
happened, but the Animated Series did. Ship sheets were shared online
for home-brew ships many people used. Amarillo Design Bureau had their
own (long distance to access) BBS, and they also had some up. (Still
do post images... for playtest!)
The best files, tho', were the software. Procomm, PKZip, QEMM, and
even BBS software was shared via BBSs. Big stuff would be available in
chunks... usually 20 minute chunks.
Not to say that the local boards were the end-all be-all... there were
two national BBS's... Compuserve, and GEnie. Both were paid, monthly,
had thousands of users, and big multi-user games. Both had SFB
sections. I was on Compuserve, also called CIS, and the discussions
and files were exciting... the monthy price was high, tho... $15 or
$20 a month... (think $60 a month!)
The games were great, and for Anchorage, there was a local CIS dial-
up, so no long distance... and lots of SFB stuff. Plus good terminals
for Mac OS 7. And downloadable games.
But CIS lacked the sense of community; it was instead a collection of
non-geographic communities. It also cemented my dislike for Steven
Paul Petrick and Steven V. Cole... their presence on CIS was rare, but
often incredibly brusque, and they didn't deal with SFB fans well.
In 1995, a new protocol hit the net... it was a new BBS and Terminal
pair... RIPterm, and a modification to WWIVnet to serve it. It sent
image files, rather than just text, and used VGA graphics. Really,
what it send were drawing commands, but it was a truly graphical
environment. And RIPterm supported ANSI, too. If the internet hadn't
been opened fully in 1996, RIP and a near-professional core of WWIV
and FIDO net boards might have invented it anyway, but using RIP
rather than HTML.
The other thing: the internet was open to some public use in 1993... I
was logging in to my UACN Vax account on my apple II, and later my Mac
CC. I was hitting several mushes during off-hours (before they banned
them), and the SFB BBS and SJB BBS (the one the FBI raided).
In late 1996, I remember Lunatic (Lunatic's Assylum, lunatic.ak.net,
later assylumbbs.com) became an ISP. I'd been using my UACN account
for 6 months after graduating, but couldn't afford the expense of the
actual mainstream ISP's. Luna's $0.50 an hour got you dialup at up to
56K .vfast access. No filtering, either. And your handle, it was also
your email account. Netscape was the browser, and my email was aramis@asylumbbs.com
. I hit the same muds, the same news sites, and the same software
sites as I had as a UAA student and temp-staffer.
My modem days ended when I got a cablemodem. It was a whopping 100kb/
sec. And it was expensive, but my wife and I both found it "fast
enough". But that's another story.
The local BBS scene was just that: a scene. Not just a series of
independent boards; people were on several. Net addicts would be on
dozens; you had to be, in order to have access. And there were net
addicts. Desperado, in order to be online most of the time, had set up
his BBS under the roof of his "day-job" business, quick-print. He had
several high quality laser printers, and could print jobs from files
in low quantities by the end of the day; most people used dot-matrix
printers at home, so the resolution was incredible on his 150dpi
lasers... people paid for quick and professional printing of
documents. For the REALLY high end, he had a couple of high speed
daisywheels... The BBS evened out his cash flow; I once asked, and he
said it paid the rent on the office during a couple of lean months.
16 lines of L&L... 2 business lines... a dozen printers... a tech-
head's wet dream.
In about 1995, Des had occasional link-ups with other BBS's. It was
interesting to chat live with people out of state... but Des couldn't
afford the long distance. But he did pay for hunt group, so you never
dialed line 2, 3, 4, etc... if you got a busy, L&L was FULL... It had
2-3 users at a time almost 24-7... $24 a day in income, minimum, and
often 8-10 users for 12-15 hours a day... $40-$100 a day. It really
was a good business... except that des was paying $200-300/mo on
phones, and probably $1000/mo in rent. And paying off the loans on the
hardware. L&L was his real business. And it boomed for several years.
When the internet went public, L&L died.
Also interesting was the changing numbers for a given BBS.
Lunatic's Asylum changed numbers several times... when it moved to
Eagle River as Ron and Elaine got married; back to Anchorage when they
got divorced. Out to Peter's Creek when Elaine and I and her kids
moved out there. back to Anchorage after I moved out . And then to a
new number when she went multiline.
Also interesting was the propagation of interboard emails. Using
WWIVnet, I could (and did) send some emails across the country. Took a
week round trip, counting a day for response. It would routinely take
2-3 days to cross BBSs in town. I fired off emails via internet, and
they took a day each way crossing the country. Until 1996, I had never
paid for email access. Only for chat.
I remember the people far more than the tech. And the tech is
memorable. L&L was my main chat board, until Lunatic went to
multiline. And then I hit both. And then I quit both. When Elaine
dropped the Assylum in 1998, I switched to GCI for internet. Dialup,
then cablemodem. I miss the chat with locals. Local-only chat was
really nice.
In fact, one of the guys from back then has created an Internet BBS
for Alaska Gamers... and it's still nice to chat with locals online,
rather than strangers... tho it's also great to be able to chat with
people I share interests with across the world.
- Wil